I officially began my life in food when I was 19. I was hired as a dishwasher at Zachary’s restaurant in Santa Cruz, California; and thus joined a varied and dubiously moral crew of dishroom alums that have passed through the battered back door of that restaurant for more than 20 years. Michael L–a burly, bearded hippie with a wild look in his crystal blue eyes–trained me to collect bus tubs from the dining room without pissing off the servers, run plates to the kitchen without attracting the cooks’ ire, and showed me how a good runner could collect a tub, run it back to the pit, empty, scrape and stack all the plates in it in less than 3 minutes flat.
“Each plate should take exactly 5 seconds to scrape,” Michael instructed while wielding a giant rubber spatula stained with the trademark yellow of turmeric from the home fries Zachary’s was famous for.
Though on that first day I was slightly frightened of Michael, he soon became the first member of the strange family I collected during the near decade I spent at Zach’s. Many of us spent 10 years or more rising and falling through the ranks there–hovering in that comfortable limbo where we’re still growing up (having not done a very good job of it at home), and not quite ready to be adults. As a result, my life at Zach’s seems to have imprinted my life in a very strange, profound and somewhat inappropriate way.
For instance, most of my closest friends are people that were once employed at Zachary’s–or people that I met through other Zach’s employees (I met Steve because a fellow dishwasher was his housemate). This is an example of a profound way I’ve been imprinted. But then I also do this weird thing where instead of saying “your welcome,” I say, “Chewbacca,” which is a further roughened bastardization of what my friend Miguel sounded like when he said “You’re welcome,” as he passed food from the Zach’s kitchen. So I say Chewbacca–involuntarily, mind you–instead of “You’re welcome,” which can be shockingly inappropriate, particularly if I’m speaking to a large, hairy stranger.
When one of the waiters from Zach’s moved to Japan, he told us in a letter that he had introduced his friends there to the Mike’s Mess–a highly caloric (and utterly delicious) dish of potatoes, cheese and eggs that the restaurant was most famous for (I say most famous for because Zach’s was also famous for other things that didn’t have anything to do with its food. Like its highly unconventional wait staff–which ranged from California beach bunnies baring lots of skin and 70’s punks in combat boots; to college preps in button downs and patchouli wearing hippies in desperate need of a haircut). ”The Mike’s Mess has made it to Japan,” he wrote. At the time I read this, sitting over my breakfast in the restaurant staffroom, I remember feeling a little betrayed. As if anything that existed with in the walls of the world that was Zach’s, could only exist there. But later, after the wonderful concept of people eating a Mike’s Mess in Tokyo really sank in, I felt elated, and liberated. All of the sudden, I had permission to own my experiences. Zach’s Mike’s Mess, became as much mine, as, well, Mike’s, I guess. Chewbacca became my way of saying You’re welcome, as well as Miguel’s (who, after years of the staff repeating what it sounded like he was saying, just started saying it and we gave up on the whole “you’re welcome” bit altogether).
The Mike’s Mess travelled with me across the country and made brief cameos in restaurants and inns that I’ve worked in since. And so did the rest of my collective experiences and habits that make me who I am. We are nothing if we aren’t the sum of the parts of our lives.
In this weird week between Christmas and New Year’s, I can’t help but wonder which experiences from this past year will come together to build the person I become in 2009. It’s something that you can’t predict or plan on. It just happens, and all of the sudden you realize you’ve changed. The world around you has morphed you–imprinted you, and in so doing, has, ironically, ensured your originality. I call it Old Year limbo–the place between who we were and who we will become. One more week of a sort of adolescence. Enjoy it!
